In general, an airbag is a device that senses a collision impact applied to a vehicle through an impact sensor and then supplies a gas into an airbag cushion and expands the airbag cushion by detonating gunpowder when a vehicle being driven suffers a head-on or broadside collision at a speed of approximately 40 km/h or higher to protect a driver and a passenger.
In recent years, as interest in safety of passengers in addition to functionality and convenience of the vehicle have increased, there has been a gradually increasing trend in the importance of devices associated with safety which can safely protect passengers when an accident of a vehicle occurs. Among the safety devices, in particular, an airbag system is used together with a safety belt to serve to prevent the passenger from suffering injuries when a head-on collision or a broadside collision of the vehicle occurs. In the airbag system, in particular, an airbag system associated with the broadside collision of the vehicle is generally used separately as a curtain airbag for protecting a head part and a side airbag for protecting the side of the passenger. Herein, the curtain airbag generally has a structure in which the curtain airbag is installed along a lateral top of a vehicle interior and is extended as a curtain type when a collision of the vehicle occurs, and the side airbag is mounted on a door or the side of a seat to prevent the passenger from suffering injuries as the side of the passenger directly hits a vehicle body including the door.
In particular, the side curtain type of airbag is an airbag installed on a side window or side structure of the vehicle in order to prevent the passenger from hitting the side window or structure of the vehicle when the vehicle turns over. In the case of the side curtain type airbag, a separate device is required to fold a side curtain airbag cushion having approximately 2 m of material as the length of the vehicle body increases.
Most side curtain airbags have a complicated configuration for roll folding thereof and use a high-priced fully automatic machine. However, the fully automatic machine has a problem in that the machine itself is very expensive, a machine configuration is very complicated, a volume thereof is very large, and maintenance cost for the machine is significantly large. Alternatively, in a manual folding machine which is primarily adopted in low-wage countries, only cushion folding of approximately 2 m is enabled, and as a result, it is difficult to secure stability for a folding size and folding quality.
Therefore, research into development of a side curtain airbag folding machine that has a simpler machine configuration and is more efficient than the fully automatic machine and that can fold a large-capacity side curtain airbag cushion of approximately 4.0 m to sufficiently secure quality stability is required.
The above information disclosed in this Background section is only for enhancement of understanding of the background of the invention and therefore it may contain information that does not form the prior art that is already known in this country to a person of ordinary skill in the art.